There is a new national five player girls basketball record for total points combined by two teams in one game. Gladbrook-Reinbeck defeated West Marshall 122 to 118 in double overtime. Gladbrook-Reinbeck plays an up-tempo style, says West Marshall Coach Fred Zeller.

He says West Marshall full-court presses and forces you to shoot layups, and they had 25 to 30 layups and then it’s a matter of whether they can hit their three-point shots. The Rebels hit 14 three-point shots in the contest to only five for West Marshall. Both teams had a lot of opportunities from the foul line.

 Zeller says free throws didn’t make much of a difference. He says they were 28-54 and his team was 19 of 39, so they evened out. Gladbrook-Reinbeck led at half 51-46 after scoring 35 points in the 2nd quarter.

West Marshall scored 34 points in the third quarter to lead 80-77. Regulation ended at 98 each and the first overtime ended at a 108 tie. A total of 19 players saw action with a West Marshall reserve ending up as high scorer. Zeller says the boxscore was full, as there were a lot of people who contributed, and he had a player, Hailee Halverson, come off the bench to score 36 points.

Halverson led West Marshall in scoring. Gladbrook-Reinbeck had six players in double figures led by Lauren Bengen. West Marshall was led by with 36. The Rebels started running a new Grinnell College-style offense this season, but head coach Bruce Bailey says that even he never imagined they’d be breaking any records.

He says they were just hoping to increase their scoring this year, but he never thought they would score 122. Bailey says athletic teams like West Marshal can score over the back of the press as they put a lot of pressure up front and that’s the way they want to play. Bailey says that he got an e-mail from a friend shortly after the contest ended that said it was a record-breaker.

“I was pretty startled, I didn’t have any idea what the record was,” Bailey says. He thought it might be a state record, but was surprised that it was a national record. Bailey estimates that the two teams combined for around 160 field goal attempts. He says that anytime you shoot the ball that much, you’re bound to light up the scoreboard. Monday’s game was the fourth time this season that the Rebels have scored one hundred points or more.

Bailey says that hitting the century mark helps his players understand just what they’re capable of. Bailey says when they started out, they were not getting enough shots up and were scoring in the 50’s and getting beat. But he says they started getting more shots, which is big to the system. He says as you hit more shots, the confidence builds and then they hit the 100 point mark, and it became a real motivational thing for the players.

Despite losing four of their first five games, Gladbrook-Reinbeck has rebounded to win eight straight games. The 240 point total topped the old record of 222 set in 2004 when Thrasher, Mississippi defeated Wheeler, Mississippi 113-109. Gladbrook-Reinbeck is 14-7 , West Marshall 15-4. It was the fourth game in five days for West Marshall. And both teams meet again on Saturday in the opening round of the regional tournaments.

By Lance Renau, KFJB, Marshalltown and Jesse Gavin, KCNZ, Cedar Falls